Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas!

Greetings and best
wishes for a happy holiday season! We’ve added two new little people to
the family circle: Lucia Marlena Riggs, born January
1, and Victoria Rose, born January 18. The
news of Lucie’s arrival came to us via a phone call to our cruise ship sailing
near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Through the magic of technology,
we were able to talk to Brian in Marion’s hospital room in San Francisco
and hear Lucie exercising her lungs in the background.

That evening we and our travel companions, Warren and
Judy Searls, toasted Lucie’s birth with a celebratory bottle of champagne
presented to us by the ship’s captain.

We got back from Australia the
day before Tori’s arrival, and were at the Valencia hospital in time to
hold her when Cathy got back to her room. The cousins are healthy, active,
and quite different from each other—Lucie is compact like a VW Beetle, and
Tori is the stretch limo model—long and lean.

The babies met for
the first time in March at a four-generation family get-together in Newbury
Park, but weren’t especially interested in each other. In August, when we
celebrated my sister Teresa’s birthday, they were at the grab-the-pacifier
and stick-fingers-in-the-baby’s-eyes stage. By Thanksgiving, however, they
were each quite excited to see another small person to push, pull, giggle
at, and tumble down with.

In comparison to the gift
of grandchildren, the other events—travel to Australia in January and Arizona
during spring break, Larry’s church-group trip to Mexico to help build ten
homes, an Alaska cruise in May, and a July get-away-from-it-all trip to
Catalina Island—seem pretty ho-hum. Only grandparents would understand that!
We appear to be working on the “A” destinations—but I’m not sure how far
we’ll carry this. Albania, Algeria, and Azerbaijan don’t hold quite the
same appeal as Andorra, Argentina, Australia, and Austria, but the world
is changing, so you never know.

In three weeks we saw but
a fraction of what Australia’s east coast and outback have to offer, and
the west coast awaits another vacation. My luggage got to visit Darwin,
but I didn’t! And Alaska—wow! Glaciers, bald eagles, Iditarod sled dogs,
whales, grizzlies (including a mom and her triplets), and a lot of sea life,
some of which ended up on our plates.

My mother’s serious stroke in April became the focus for
family councils, get-togethers and confabs; after almost two months in hospital
and rehab facilities, getting her back to her home was a big accomplishment.

We’ve all learned a lot
about the health care system, the progress back to mobility, and various
bumps along the road to recovery. Mom has a home health aide a few hours
each day to assist with her care, but it’s still frustrating for her and
a challenge to regain her independence. My dad’s been a rock of strength
and patience during all this. The help and support of all my siblings has
been invaluable, and I don’t know what we would do without email and Dad’s
updates each evening.

There are many challenges ahead, but she has made significant
progress and we hope this next year will be more manageable for her and
for them.

Both my brothers
made trips to Riverside to see Mom. Despite Seattle John’s recent knee replacement,
his mobility in October was impressive. Amherst (MA) Michael and son Isaac
came in August and we had a preview of what it will be like some day to
ferry grandchildren to amusement parks, baseball games, the beach, etc.
The Angels graciously allowed
the Red Sox to win the night
we went to the Anaheim stadium, but the four hour contest took a toll on
the jet-lagged Right Coast contingent.

My sister Teresa has made multiple trips from Atascadero
to Riverside, a tedious five-hour haul, to keep the old folks company, cook
some gourmet fare, and check on things. My weekend trips to Riverside pale
in comparison at just under two hours if I go early on a Saturday morning.
In between visits we cook, freeze, label, and then re-stock their freezer
to give Dad, the chief cook and bottle washer now, a little break.

Cathy and
Kirk still keep the streets of L.A. safe for the citizens while chasing
after and corralling the beautiful Tori in Valencia. Their stress is reduced
knowing Kirk’s mom Kathy both manages the house and cares for their daughter,
who just happens to be her own highly accomplished granddaughter.

Jenny has finished a long and arduous pesticide trial
defending Dole Food, and is finally getting the rest and
recreation she desperately deserves. Sadly, she lost both her cats this
year, Pete in March and Honey in December. “After 15 years with them, the
house seems so very quiet now,” she writes.

As technical lead on Adobe’s soon-to-be-released
Adobe
Media Player (AMP), Brian is busy, excited, and challenged by his work.
Marion is back taking night classes at the Academy of Art. An upgrade to
a house may be in the offing for 2008—Lucie has requested more room for play.

The three will spend Christmas with Omi Christine and
Opi Klaus near Munich
this year. Skype and
videos on the web have provided
frequent progress and growth updates for all throughout the year.

David’s Santa Monica condo—replete with LCD and plasma
TVs and a Wii—is now a popular bachelor pad. When
InfoSpace, his previous employer,
closed its LA office in mid-year, he was snatched up by a growth company
selling mobile applications, FunMobility,
with three-year sales growth of 1921%! He’s sharing in their success and
life is good.

Because I’m still teaching at
the university (five classes this fall!),
Larry gets to do some traveling
on his own. This year he saw friends and family in northern California in
early April, and headed to the East Coast for fall foliage, visiting family
from Massachusetts to Maryland to Florida, touching eleven states and experiencing
wild variations in weather.

I can tolerate his solo travels with equanimity except
when he calls me from one of Boston’s
Legal Sea Foods restaurants
and describes the cuisine in excruciating detail. What’s painful is that
I take the call while standing over the sink eating the Bachelor Salad (brother-in-law
John Kinnear’s contribution to family lore). But we’re still married.

I accompanied him to his 50th high school reunion in September
(lots of old folks there!) and we celebrated 41 years of wedded adventure
a couple of days later.

The annual event
for Teresa and me and our husbands is the
3-Day Breast
Cancer walk, this year in San Diego in November. All of us crewed, the
sisters on check-in crew and the brothers-in-law on traffic and safety crew.
As always, it was exhausting, exhilarating, emotional, inspiring, and not
to be missed.

I have celebrated a milestone: ten years since my diagnosis.
It’s been a real gift, being able to see our kids grow up and become interesting
adults with fascinating lives, welcome Kirk and Marion into the family,
and now greet Lucie and Tori.

I still go to oil painting class one day a week, and have
done several portraits this year, as well as landscapes and florals. Larry
is off the Homeowners Board
and is far less stressed. He continues to put
in volunteer time at church, doing their computer stuff, and helps friends
and family set up and tune up home computer systems.

We hope your holidays are peaceful, joyous, and full of
all good things.